This invention relates to a method and system for allowing peering relationships between telecommunications networks. While the invention is particularly directed to the art of telecommunications and multimedia networks such as the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), and will be thus described with specific reference thereto, it will be appreciated that the invention may have usefulness in other fields and applications.
By way of background, wireless communication networks, which are well known, allow mobile devices to communicate with each other and other networks, such as the Internet and the public switched telephone network (PSTN). First and second generation wireless telephone systems are generally constrained in the amount of bandwidth available for communication, which limits capacity and also the types of services that can be provided. Third generation (3G) wireless systems, which are being developed through the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), include greater bandwidth, thereby increasing capacity and allowing for enhanced services, such as multimedia services.
3GPP is the new worldwide standard for the creation, delivery, and playback of multimedia over new, high-speed wireless networks. 3GPP enables the free sharing of multimedia files between a variety of devices, including cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and notebook and desktop computers. 3GPP devices include, in addition to a voice communication interface, capability for communication of data and display of data, including video.
The rise of the 3GPP has led to the development of a telecommunications network generally known as the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS). IMS is defined by IP standards that are developed by 3GPP and 3GPP2, the industry bodies responsible for determining 3G developments. The standards specify that the role of IMS is to deliver person-to-person real time IP-based multimedia communications, such as voice and video, as well as person-to-machine communications; fully integrate real time with non-real time multimedia communications; enable different services and applications to interact; and support simple user set up of multiple services in a single session or multiple simultaneous synchronized sessions. The standard has been developed to support a wide range of access mechanisms, including GSM, W-CDMA, CDMA2000, WI-FI and other wireless broad band technologies such as WIMAX as well as fixed line broadband. Further, there has been an attempt in the industry to integrate wireline and wireless networks. In this regard, there is a need to allow a peering relationship between two IMS networks (e.g., a wireline network and a wireless network) where a person is a subscriber of both networks. In other words, the person must receive the same service no matter which IMS network that person is using.